I was captivated by the mixture of powerful riffs and outstanding
melodic, emotional passages on The Elysian Fields' 1998 effort _We...
the Enlightened_. Briskly paced death and emotional doom metal were
combined in an innovative way, and the result was remarkable at the
time -- indeed obliterating their debut _Adelain_. Alas, _WtE_'s
successor, 2001's _12 Ablaze_, turned out to be a rather soulless
album. Now the Greek trio have returned with another effort, and the
possibility of a return to form made me want to investigate. It soon
becomes apparent that this time the balance leans very heavily towards
electronics, rather than acoustic strings or doomy influences. Seven years
is a long time, and it wouldn't have been fair to expect their sound to
remain unchanged from _WtE_; the question is whether The Elysian Fields
have succeeded in making their new, techno-oriented death metal style work as well as their old one did on that album.

The distinctive, throaty death vocals are still present throughout,
which is pleasant to hear. The guitars and artificial drums also tend to
sound familiar, and occasionally some of the more organic keyboard
work is also reminiscent of their past. Similarities end there however,
because their songwriting now revolves around techno-styled keyboard
work for the most part -- and that marks the album's downfall for me.
It is therefore essentially the way they communicate their music to
the listener that has changed; and unfortunately, the result is
unsatisfying, as TEF seem unable to recover their inspiration of yore.
Compared to their old strings and piano, these songs seem
emotionally barren and smothered in happy keyboards. Sure there are
some good riffs and passages, some good keyboard work as well in
places, but they don't seem able to put five minutes of their admittedly
good music together without inserting some annoying passages as
well. Still, _Suffering G.O.D. Almighty_ is not a bad album, and it
might well be worth checking out if you don't mind techno in your
metal. However, as far as I am concerned, it just shows The Elysian
Fields have taken another large step farther away from what I like
about their music, and in my opinion reeks of wasted, misguided
potential.